A Lost Stone Found
A missing piece of history reunited, a new discovery made
Last year’s work to rebuild the front archway to Menokin required ingenuity, research, patience and skill that is not as easily apparent in the finished product.
Completed front archway, 2025
Working with guidance from our architectural historian, our stonemasons went through a long and laborious process to reconstruct and replicate all the necessary stones. They faced one structural challenge after another, and finding the best stones from the rubble to place back into the restored front wall took a good deal of time.
Mike Conway working on the console replica
There was one sort of stone they knew they wouldn’t find: on each end of the row of stones that frame the top of the archway is a stone called a console. Think of it as an artistic flare, a curved scroll to mark the edge of the full doorway.
By looking carefully through an archive of old photographs (see above) and working with 1940 Historic American Buildings Survey sketches, the stonemasons were able to mock up and then reproduce the decorated missing consoles. They built clay models in close consultation with our architectural historians and then, working with original Menokin stones, re-carved the missing consoles.
In September 2025, both console stone replicas were introduced into the ruin during the rebuilding of the front archway. What no one could know is that a new documentary would change the picture. During the December broadcasts of Ken Burns’ “The American Revolution” on PBS, Menokin invested in a handful of promos to be shown, each just 15 seconds long. A Virginian in the audience took note. A few days after the broadcast, he called. “I have a stone of yours,” he said. It was one of the missing consoles!
Below is the original console stone he returned:
In retrospect, comparing the original to the reproduction, the stonemasons did an amazing job. They got the scale, shape, front and one side perfectly right, that including the Double-S design.
What we couldn’t see, however, was the leaf pattern on the other side (see below), a design discrepancy that wasn’t known until we could see the stone in its entirety. This original console stone now sits in the Menokin Visitor Center where it will remain as part of our permanent exhibit. Its return is an important part of the story of Menokin’s rebuilding.
We have a few other pieces returned in similar fashion. It is a remarkable tale of all the little bits that have to align for this work to continue. If Burns hadn’t made his documentary, if we hadn’t bought promo spots, if this man hadn’t been watching, if he hadn’t kept it all these years, we would never have the console back.
Proof as ever, that preserving our past is a precious and precarious matter, shaped both by opportunity and due diligence. Are there any other pieces of Menokin out there waiting to come home? Maybe the carved wooden front door?
Front archway with the console replicas